I WAS reading Councillor Elizabeth Foxton’s letter (May 6 – On your bikes) whilst inching along the inner ring road, bumper to bumper with other motorists, long after the end of the school and commuter runs.
I’m saving the crossword for the journey back.
She suggests that the answer to the increasing traffic congestion is to build cycle lanes and encourage both pupils and commuters to use them. Creating a cycling culture as she says.
Her proposal is flawed because the preferred method of transport for the majority of parents and commuters will always be the car.
Cycling, on the other hand, has always been, and will always be, a leisure pursuit.
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There are now more kids on bikes, as wary pedestrians dodging them will attest, but they don’t ride them to school.
There are also more adults enjoying their fetish for Lycra, usually four abreast on country roads, but who also put their bikes away when they drive to work.
Cycling for kids and adults is healthy – I’m all for it.
If I were a cycling commuter, however, I wouldn’t want to share a lane with kids doing wheelies – I’d feel safer on the road alongside drivers observing the highway code.
Cycle lanes are unsafe, which is why you see them empty in any city that has adopted them.
I think Councillor Foxton and her colleagues should concentrate on making travel in the city easier for the majority of road users, reversing their anti-motorist policies, rather than pursuing a utopian vision of a car-free world.
Alan Meredith
Hereford
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